


Our Love

by IReadAndWriteSometimes



Category: The Doctor Blake Mysteries
Genre: F/M, Romance, fluffy goodness, redefining love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:14:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27992097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IReadAndWriteSometimes/pseuds/IReadAndWriteSometimes
Summary: On their first night together as husband and wife, Lucien contemplates how blissfully happy he now is and redefines love.
Relationships: Jean Beazley/Lucien Blake
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13





	Our Love

**Author's Note:**

> For November I gave myself my very own writing challenge. The goal was simple: write a short story every day, good or bad, just write it. I didn't quite succeed with the every day part, but I probably wrote more last month than in the last six months put together. The story below is the very first I completed for the challenge, and I rather liked it, so after my partner in crime, escapewithstories, lent me her critical eye (thank you, btw), I finally plucked up the courage to post it. It is short, sweet, and fluffy, and I hope you enjoy it. :)

Caught in the afterglow of their first shared night together, and deliciously trapped underneath Jean’s warm, sated weight, Lucien’s heart burst with happiness and love. 

Fate had played a cruel game with both him and Jean over the years, before and after they stumbled upon one another. It wasn’t until they finally exchanged the vows that would bind their lives together forever, that he truly let his guard down, and let the reality of it wash over him.

He had felt this way before, but that feeling was a mere memory, faint, and thoroughly tucked away in the corner of his mind, buried beneath the horrors and terrors of the war and the losses that had come with it. Part of him rather worried it was all just a deceitful dream, and that he would wake up a prisoner yet again, his body and spirit bruised, battered and crushed beyond recognition. 

He wasn't a prisoner anymore though. He knew that in his very bones. Jean was irrefutable proof of that. This feeling of bliss and utter contentment, which he did not believe he would experience ever again, which he did not think he even deserved, was proof of that. He wanted it to last forever, for he just as surely knew that anything less he could not survive another time, not alone.

As if sensing the train his thoughts had taken, Jean, who he thought had fallen asleep, moved. A mewling sound left her as she pressed her lips to his breast, and then she asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, my darling,” he dipped his head to look at her, utterly shocked that she would even think anything could be wrong tonight, “nothing, absolutely nothing is wrong.” With that, he wrapped his arms more tightly around her form, and placed a reassuring kiss into her hair.

“Your heart is racing.” Her hand came to touch the middle of his chest, no doubt anticipating his instinct to deny it, and she coaxed further. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”

He sighed. It would do him no good to begin their marriage with lies or platitudes, yet he was reluctant to sully the night with reminders of his past. The scars on his back had sullied it enough, he thought bitterly. Unsure of how to put his thoughts into words that would do his emotions justice, he closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. He let the now intimately familiar scent of his wife wash over him, and then stared at the ceiling for several long moments. In the semi-darkness, he could only just make out the golden flecks that adorned it, and while quite captivating, that wasn't what held his attention. Jean did. Her soothing weight between his arms as he held her. Her smooth, warm skin beneath his fingertips as he brushed them along her side. Her steady breathing as she patiently waited him out. Her presence, her mere existence enraptured him, and as he drew one more breath of what was entirely Jean, finding the right words suddenly did not seem hard at all. 

Something in his demeanor must have tipped Jean off, for no sooner did he make up his mind, did she lift her head to seek out his eyes, expectantly. He tore his gaze away from the ceiling and, on a small reassuring smile, finally started, “I only ever thought there were two kinds of love…"

“And what were those?” she asked softly, and he closed his eyes once again when she ran her hand gently through his beard in further encouragement.

“The kind you would kill for,” he answered quietly, his words strangely at odds with the way he gently drew his fingers into her hair, “and the kind you would die for.” 

She frowned, and he was quick to pass his thumb along the lines that appeared on her brow, when she asked, “And our love?” He shivered as she sent her fingers down his chest. “What kind do you take our love for?”

 _Our_ love. 

He smiled instantly. Never would he stop marvelling at this incredible stroke of luck. It utterly baffled him that such a fierce, headstrong, stubborn, no-nonsense kind of woman would ever take him, a depressed drunk, a selfish, self-pitying bastard, and not just mend his shattered heart, but pour her love into it, and hand over her own for his safekeeping. It fascinated him more than any mystery Lawson threw his way, that Jean Beazley, or well, Blake now, ever saw in him anything worth saving, let alone loving. With a long set of slow, small gestures, she had breathed new life into him. Even as he blatantly disrespected or defied her in the beginning, she had stood her ground, and without him even realizing, chipped away at the armor of his guilt, anger and self-punishment. He had not thought himself worthy of her efforts, there were doubts still, but when she took it a step further, let him peek through her own decades long armor, he was finally ready to crawl out of the dark hole he had dug himself into, and step out into the dazzling, bright light that was her.

He kissed her then, slowly, deeply and passionately, until she whimpered, and finally answered. “Our love, Mrs. Blake,” he kissed her again when she immediately smiled at her new title, “that's the kind of love I live for.”


End file.
